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TWO

Freedom – Religious Education – Jedburgh

[My mother remained at school at Musselburgh for a twelve-month, till she was eleven years old. After this prolonged and elaborate education, she was recalled to Burntisland, and the results of the process she had undergone are detailed in her Recollections with much drollery.]

SOON after my return home I received a note from a lady in the neighbourhood, inquiring for my mother, who had been ill. This note greatly distressed me, for my half-text writing was as bad as possible, and I could neither compose an answer nor spell the words. My eldest cousin, Miss Somerville, a grown-up young lady, then with us, got me out of this scrape, but I soon got myself into another, by writing to my brother in Edinburgh that I had sent him a bank-knot (note) to buy something for me. The school at Musselburgh was expensive, and I was reproached with having cost so much money in vain. My mother said she would have been contented if I had only learnt to write well and keep accounts, which was all that a woman was expected to know.

This passed over, and I was like a wild animal escaped out of a cage. I was no longer amused in the gardens, but wandered about the country. When the tide was out I spent hours on the sands, looking at the star-fish and sea-urchins, or watching the children digging for sand-eels, cockles, and the spouting razor-fish. I made a collection of shells, such as were cast ashore, some so small that they appeared like white specks in patches of black sand. There was a small pier on the sands for shipping limestone brought from the coal mines inland. I was astonished to see the surface of these blocks of stone covered with beautiful impressions of what seemed to be leaves; how they got there I could not imagine, but I picked up the broken bits, and even large pieces, and brought them to my repository. I knew the eggs of many birds, and made a collection of them. I never robbed a nest, but bought strings of eggs, which were sold by boys, besides getting sea-fowl eggs from sailors who had been in whalers or on other northern voyages. It was believed by these sailors that there was a gigantic flat fish in the North Sea, called a kraken.9 It was so enormous that when it came to the surface, covered with tangles and sand, it was supposed to be an island, till, on one occasion, part of a ship’s crew landed on it and found out their mistake. However, much as they believed in it, none of the sailors at Burntisland had ever seen it. The sea serpent was also an article of our faith.

In the rocks at the end of our garden there was a shingly opening, in which we used to bathe, and where at low tide I frequently waded among masses of rock covered with seaweeds. With the exception of dulse and tangle I knew the names of none, though I was well acquainted with and admired many of these beautiful plants. I also watched the crabs, live shells, jelly-fish, and various marine animals, all of which were objects of curiosity and amusement to me in my lonely life.

The flora on the links and hills around was very beautiful, and I soon learnt the trivial names of all the plants. There was not a tree nor bush higher than furze in this part of the country, but the coast to the north-west of Burntisland was bordered by a tree-and brushwood-covered bank belonging to the Earl of Morton, which extended to Aberdour. I could not go so far alone, but had frequent opportunities of walking there and gathering ferns, foxgloves, and prim-roses, which grew on the mossy banks of a little stream that ran into the sea. The bed of this stream or burn was thickly covered with the freshwater mussel, which I knew often contained pearls, but I did not like to kill the creatures to get the pearls.

One day my father, who was a keen sportsman, having gone to fish for red trout at the mouth of this stream, found a young whale, or grampus, stranded in the shallow water. He immediately ran back to the town, got boats, captured the whale, and landed it in the harbour, where I went with the rest of the crowd to see the muckle fish.10

There was always a good deal of shipbuilding carried on in the harbour, generally coasting vessels or colliers. We, of course, went to see them launched, which was a pretty sight. [2D, 15: The name was always given by a woman standing on a platform at the stern. When the last shores were knocked away and the vessel began to move, she dashed a bottle of wine against her and gave the name which was generally that of the wife or daughter of the shipbuilder but sometimes it was fanciful as the Morning Star, the Happy-Go-Lucky, etc. As soon as the ship slipped into the water a number of the carpenters and boys who were on board rushing backwards and forwards made her roll and pitch till she was towed to a part of the pier where she lay till she was fitted with her mast and rigging.]

When the bad weather began I did not know what to do with myself. Fortunately we had a small collection of books, among which I found Shakespeare, and read it at every moment I could spare from my domestic duties. These occupied a great part of my time; besides, I had to shew (sew) my sampler, working the alphabet from A to Z, as well as the ten numbers, on canvas.

My mother did not prevent me from reading, but my aunt Janet, who came to live in Burntisland after her father’s death, greatly disapproved of my conduct. She was an old maid who could be very agreeable and witty, but she had all the prejudices of the time with regard to women’s duties, and said to my mother, ‘I wonder you let Mary waste her time in reading, she never shews (sews) more than if she were a man.’ Whereupon I was sent to the village school to learn plain needlework. I do not remember how long it was after this that an old lady sent some very fine linen to be made into shirts for her brother, and desired that one should be made entirely by me. This shirt was so well worked that I was relieved from attending the school, but the house linen was given into my charge to make and to mend. We had a large stock, much of it very beautiful, for the Scotch ladies at that time were very proud of their napery, but they no longer sent it to Holland to be bleached, as had once been the custom. We grew flax, and our maids spun it. The coarser yarn was woven in Burntisland, and bleached upon the links; the finer was sent to Dunfermline, where there was a manufactory of table-linen.

I was annoyed that my turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it. Among our books I found Chapone’s° Letters to Young Women, and resolved to follow the course of history there recommended, the more so as we had most of the works she mentions. One, however, which my cousin lent me was in French, and here the little I had learnt at school was useful, for with the help of a dictionary I made out the sense. What annoyed me was my memory not being good – I could remember neither names nor dates. Years afterwards I studied a ‘Memoria Technica,’11 then in fashion, without success; yet in my youth I could play long pieces of music on the piano without the book, and I never forget mathematical formulæ. In looking over one of my MSS, which I had not seen for forty years, I at once recognised the formulæ for computing the secular inequalities of the moon.

We had two small globes, and my mother allowed me to learn the use of them from Mr Reed, the village schoolmaster, who came to teach me for a few weeks in the winter evenings. Besides the ordinary branches, Mr Reed taught Latin and navigation, but these were out of the question for me. At the village school the boys often learnt Latin, but it was thought sufficient for the girls to be able to read the Bible; very few even learnt writing. I recollect, however, that some men were ignorant of book-keeping; our baker, for instance, had a wooden tally, in which he made a notch for every loaf of bread, and of course we had the corresponding tally. They were called nick-sticks.

My bedroom had a window to the south, and a small closet near had one to the north. At these I spent many hours, studying the stars by the aid of the celestial globe. Although I watched and admired the magnificent displays of the Aurora,12 which frequently occurred, they seemed to be so nearly allied to lightning that I was somewhat afraid of them. At an earlier period of my life there was a comet, which I dreaded exceedingly.

My father was Captain of the Repulse,13 a fifty-gun ship, attached to the Northern fleet commanded by the Earl of Northesk°. The winter was extremely stormy, the fleet was driven far north, and kept there by adverse gales, till both officers and crew were on short rations. They ran out of candles, and had to tear up their stockings for wicks, and dip them into the fat of the salt meat which was left. We were in great anxiety, for it was reported that some of the ships had foundered; we were, however, relieved by the arrival of the Repulse in Leith roads for repair.

[1D, 23: We were very gay for our house at Burntisland was always full of the officers, and then for the first time I was on board a man-of-war.]

Our house on one occasion being full, I was sent to sleep in a room quite detached from the rest and with a different staircase. There was a closet in this room in which my father kept his fowling pieces, fishing tackle, and golf clubs, and a long garret overhead was filled with presses and stores of all kinds, among other things a number of large cheeses were on a board slung by ropes to the rafters. One night I had put out my candle and was fast asleep, when I was awakened by a violent crash, and then a rolling noise over my head. Now the room was said to be haunted, so that the servants would not sleep in it. I was desperate, for there was no bell. I groped my way to the closet – lucifer matches were unknown in those days – I seized one of the golf clubs, which are shod with iron, and thundered on the bedroom door till I brought my father, followed by the whole household, to my aid. It was found that the rats had gnawed through the ropes by which the cheeses were suspended, so that the crash and rolling were accounted for, and I was scolded for making such an uproar.

Children suffer much misery by being left alone in the dark. When I was very young I was sent to bed at eight or nine o’clock, and the maid who slept in the room went away as soon as I was in bed, leaving me alone in the dark till she came to bed herself. All that time I was in an agony of fear of something indefinite, I could not tell what. The joy, the relief, when the maid came back, were such that I instantly fell asleep. Now that I am a widow and old, although I always have a night-lamp, such is the power of early impressions that I rejoice when daylight comes.

At Burntisland the sacrament was administered in summer because people came in crowds from the neighbouring parishes to attend the preachings. The service was long and fatiguing. A number of clergymen came to assist, and as the minister’s manse could not accommodate them all, we entertained three of them, one of whom was always the Rev. Dr Campbell, father of Lord Campbell.

Thursday was a day of preparation. The morning service began by a psalm sung by the congregation, then a prayer was said by the minister, followed by a lecture on some chapter of the Bible, generally lasting an hour, after that another psalm was sung, followed by a prayer, a sermon which lasted seldom less than an hour, and the whole ended with a psalm, a short prayer and a benediction. Every one then went home to dinner and returned afterwards for afternoon service, which lasted more than an hour and a half. Friday was a day of rest, but I together with many young people went at this time to the minister to receive a stamped piece of lead as a token that we were sufficiently instructed to be admitted to Christ’s table. This ticket was given to the Elder on the following Sunday. On Saturday there was a morning service, and on Sunday such multitudes came to receive the sacrament that the devotions continued till late in the evening. The ceremony was very strikingly and solemnly conducted. The communicants sat on each side of long narrow tables covered with white linen, in imitation of the last supper of Christ, and the Elders handed the bread and wine. After a short exhortation from one of the ministers the first set retired, and were succeeded by others. When the weather was fine a sermon, prayers, and psalm-singing took place either in the church-yard or on a grassy bank at the Links for such as were waiting to communicate. On the Monday morning there was the same long service as on the Thursday. It was too much for me; I always came home with a headache, and took a dislike to sermons [1D, 25: which continues to this day and in after life I could no longer believe in the gloomy doctrines of Calvinism, but I have always kept up my early habit of reading the Bible. In youth I liked it for its sublime poetry, later in life it has been my only consolation in severe affliction.]

Our minister was a rigid Calvinist. His sermons were gloomy, and so long that he occasionally would startle the congregation by calling out to some culprit, ‘Sit up there, how daur ye sleep i’ the kirk.’ Some saw-mills in the neighbourhood were burnt down, so the following Sunday we had a sermon on hell-fire. The kirk was very large and quaint; a stair led to a gallery on each side of the pulpit, which was intended for the tradespeople, and each division was marked with a suitable device, and text from Scripture. On the bakers’ portion a sheaf of wheat was painted; a balance and weights on the grocers’, and on the weavers’, which was opposite to our pew, there was a shuttle, and below it the motto, ‘My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hop job.’14 The artist was evidently no clerk.

My brother Sam, while attending the university in Edinburgh, came to us on the Saturdays and returned to town on Monday. He of course went with us to the kirk on Sunday morning, but we let our mother attend afternoon service alone, as he and I were happy to be together, and we spent the time sitting on the grassy rocks at the foot of our garden, from whence we could see a vast extent of the Firth of Forth with Edinburgh and its picturesque hills. It was very amusing, for we occasionally saw three or four whales spouting, and shoals of porpoises at play. However, we did not escape reproof, for I recollect the servant coming to tell us that the minister had sent to inquire whether Mr and Miss Fairfax had been taken ill, as he had not seen them at the kirk in the afternoon. The minister in question was Mr Wemyss, who had married a younger sister of my mother’s. [1D, 25 verso: He was a rigid Calvinist and by no means refined yet he was heir to a very ancient baronetcy though he never assumed the title; his son, my cousin, did but as he died unmarried the title is extinct. The Scotch clergy were of higher descent at that time than they are now.]

[1D, 26: verso: My uncle William had given my brother Sam a gold watch and chain of which he was very proud and used to beat his watch against my piano, but the watch was often in the hands of the watchmaker: now he broke the minute hand; then he let it fall – the string snapped and uncoiled with a whirr; at last he let it fall into the sea while catching small fish called bodles [?]15 in the harbour at Burntisland. I laughed at him and when he got it back again my mother said she hoped he would get no more presents for she had paid nearly as much as it was worth to the watchmaker.]

When I was about thirteen my mother took a small apartment in Edinburgh for the winter, and I was sent to a writing school, where I soon learnt to write a good hand, and studied the common rules of arithmetic. My uncle William Henry Charters, lately returned from India, gave me a pianoforte, and I had music lessons from an old lady who lived in the top storey of one of the highest houses in the old town. I slept in the same room with my mother. One morning I called out, much alarmed, ‘There is lightning!’ but my mother said, after a moment, ‘No; it is fire!’ and on opening the window shutters I found that the flakes of fire flying past had made the glass quite hot. The next house but one was on fire and burning fiercely, and the people next door were throwing everything they possessed, even china and glass, out of the windows into the street. We dressed quickly, and my mother sent immediately to Trotter the upholsterer for four men. We then put our family papers, our silver, &c., &c., into trunks; then my mother said, ‘Now let us breakfast, it is time enough for us to move our things when the next house takes fire.’ Of its doing so there was every probability because casks of turpentine and oil were exploding from time to time in a carriage manufactory at the back of it. Several gentlemen of our acquaintance who came to assist us were surprised to find us breakfasting quietly as if there were nothing unusual going on. In fact my mother, though a coward in many things, had, like most women, the presence of mind and the courage of necessity. The fire was extinguished, and we had only the four men to pay for doing nothing, nor did we sacrifice any of our property like our neighbours who had completely lost their heads from terror. I may mention here that on one occasion when my father was at home he had been ill with a severe cold, and wore his nightcap. While reading in the drawing-room one evening he called out, ‘I smell fire, there is no time to be lost,’ so, snatching up a candle, he wandered from room to room followed by us all still smelling fire, when one of the servants said, ‘O, sir, it is the tassel of your nightcap that is on fire.’

On returning to Burntisland, I spent four or five hours daily at the piano; and for the sake of having something to do, I taught myself Latin enough, from such books as we had, to read Cæsar’s Commentaries. I went that summer on a visit to my aunt at Jedburgh, and, for the first time in my life, I met in my uncle, Dr Somerville, with a friend who approved of my thirst for knowledge. During long walks with him in the early mornings, he was so kind, that I had the courage to tell him that I had been trying to learn Latin, but I feared it was in vain; for my brother and other boys, superior to me in talent, and with every assistance, spent years in learning it. He assured me, on the contrary, that in ancient times many women – some of them of the highest rank in England – had been very elegant scholars, and that he would read Virgil with me if I would come to his study for an hour or two every morning before breakfast, which I gladly did.

I never was happier in my life than during the months I spent at Jedburgh. My aunt was a charming companion – witty, full of anecdote, and had read more than most women of her day, especially Shakespeare, who was her favourite author. My cousins had little turn for reading, but they were better educated than most girls. They were taught to write by David Brewster°, son of the village schoolmaster, afterwards Sir David, who became one of the most distinguished philosophers and discoverers of the age, member of all the scientific societies at home and abroad, and at last President of the University of Edinburgh. He was studying in Edinburgh when I was at Jedburgh; so I did not make his acquaintance then; but later in life he became my valued friend. I did not know till after his death, that, while teaching my cousins, he fell in love with my cousin Margaret. I do not believe she was aware of it. She was afterwards attached to an officer in the army; but my aunt would not allow her to go to that outlandish place, Malta, where he was quartered; so she lived and died unmarried. Steam has changed our ideas of distance since that time.

My uncle’s house – the manse – in which I was born, stands in a pretty garden, bounded by the fine ancient abbey, which, though partially ruined, still serves as the parish kirk. The garden produced abundance of common flowers, vegetables, and fruit. Some of the plum and pear trees were very old, and were said to have been planted by the monks. Both were excellent in quality, and very productive. The view from both garden and manse was over the beautiful narrow valley through which the Jed flows. The precipitous banks of red sandstone are richly clothed with vegetation, some of the trees ancient and very fine, especially the magnificent one called the capon tree, and the lofty king of the wood, remnants of the fine forests which at one time had covered the country. An inland scene was new to me, and I was never tired of admiring the tree-crowned scaurs or precipices, where the rich glow of the red sandstone harmonised so well with the autumnal tints of the foliage.

We often bathed in the pure stream of the Jed. My aunt always went with us, and was the merriest of the party; we bathed in a pool which was deep under the high scaur, but sloped gradually from the grassy bank on the other side. Quiet and transparent as the Jed was, it one day came down with irresistible fury, red with the débris of the sandstone scaurs. There had been a thunderstorm in the hills upstream, and as soon as the river began to rise, the people came out with pitchforks and hooks to catch the hayricks, sheaves of corn, drowned pigs, and other animals that came sweeping past. My cousins and I were standing on the bridge, but my aunt called us off when the water rose above the arches, for fear of the bridge giving way. We made expeditions every day; sometimes we went nutting in the forest; at other times we gathered mushrooms on the grass parks of Stewartfield, where there was a wood of picturesque old Scotch firs, inhabited by a colony of rooks. I still kept the habit of looking out for birds, and had the good fortune to see a heron, now a rare bird in the valley of the Jed. Some of us went every day to a spring called the Allerly well,16 about a quarter of a mile from the manse, and brought a large jug of its sparkling water for dinner. The evenings were cheerful; my aunt sang Scotch songs prettily, and told us stories and legends about Jedburgh, which had been a royal residence in the olden time. She had a tame white and tawny-coloured owl, which we fed every night, and sometimes brought into the drawing-room. The Sunday evening never was gloomy, though properly observed. We occasionally drank tea with acquaintances, and made visits of a few days to the Rutherfurds° of Edgerton and others; but I was always glad to return to the manse.

My uncle, like other ministers of the Scottish Kirk, was allowed a glebe, which he farmed himself. Besides horses, a cow was kept, which supplied the family with cream and butter, and the skimmed milk was given to the poor; but as the milk became scarce, one woman was deprived, for the time, of her share. Soon after, the cow was taken ill, and my uncle’s ploughman, Will, came to him and said, ‘Sir, gin you would give that carline Tibby Jones her soup o’ milk again, the coo would soon be weel eneugh.’ Will was by no means the only believer in witchcraft at that time.

[2D, 23 bis: Dr Charters, minister of Wilton near Hawick, was a cousin of my mother’s and had been an admirer of her, but as she did not fancy him he remained a bachelor till very late in life when he married a ladylike amiable person of good family nearly of his own age. They had property of their own in the neighbourhood, but they lived in the manse prettily situated on the banks of the Slitterik.17 I was a particular favourite of both; they invited me to pay them a visit and sent the carriage to Jedburgh for my cousin Janet and me. It was an antiquated affair with a pair of fat, sleek, black horses with long tails, and a coachman who had been in the family time out of mind, yet he was a strict dissenter and would on no account hear his master preach. Dr Charters was a man of high cultivation and taste, he had travelled much in his youth, was a charming companion, grave in his demeanour yet cheerful, and perfectly liberal in his opinions. He took great interest in the education of his parishioners and had a library for the express purpose of lending them books not only on religion, but history, travels and voyages, also Shakespeare, Milton and other poets and was always ready to explain what they did not understand. Mrs Charters had five or six beautiful tortoise-shell coloured cats. One or two were always on her knee and they were very fierce and would not let me touch them, and above all they hated music, for one day when my cousin was singing with rather a loud screamy voice, one of the cats flew at her throat and bit her.]

9 Kraken: this mythical sea monster was first described in Pontoppidan’s Natural History of Norway (1752), translated from the Norwegian in 1755.

10 ‘Muckle’ or ‘mickle’: ‘big’ (Scots).

11 A Memoria Technica was a method of aiding memory e. g.: Memoria Technica, or a New Method of Artificial memory… applied to… Chronology, History etc [By R. Grey] London, 1730.

12 Aurora: this luminous atmospheric phenomenon, ascribed to electricity, radiating from the magnetic poles is usually more visible in northern or southern regions, hence Northern Lights.

13 Repulse: actually a 64-gun ship. The Repulse was initially involved in the Nore mutiny but was one of the first ships to leave it. The Venerable, Fairfax’s later command, was a 74-gun ship.

14 Hop job: the artist should have carved ‘My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and are spent without hope’, ‘Job’ (Job, 7, 6).

15 A ‘bodle’ is a small copper coin, twopence Scots, hence something of little value.

16 Allerly: the home of Sir David Brewster (q.v.) near Melrose was called ‘Allerly’: he settled in this half-cottage, half-villa near Gattonside, Roxburghshire in 1824.

17 This is presumably Slitrig Water, a tributary of the River Teviot.